After the Fall
by Lechery
Summary: POST-GAME! A fascist government has seized control of Grand Pulse and displaced the former L'Cie. One has a plan to escape, the other is helplessly trapped. One night, their worlds are turned upside-down.
1. Chapter 1

Title: AFTER THE FALL

Author: Lechery

Category: Flight (Fang/Light Romance, Angst)

Rating: T (for coarse language and sexual themes)

Summary: POST-GAME! A fascist government has seized control of Grand Pulse and displaced the former L'Cie. One has a plan to escape, the other is helplessly trapped. One night, their worlds are turned upside-down.

Disclaimer: I own nothing and stuff, Square Enix owns everything. I'm keeping the fandom alive, Square. Cut me slack and don't sue me plz.

OOO

Sweat rolled from her shoulders and trickled down her spine, stuck to the fine angel dust of hair on her back and chilled her flesh. Darkness swallowed the room and drowned her vision. The usual humdrum rhythm of the fans filled her consciousness and disturbed her sleep. A headache threatened at her forehead; stuffy air struggled through her chest and streamed back out her nostrils. A lightheaded dizziness, a slight cramp in her gut - the usual dysfunction of an ordinary night.

She threw the covers from her naked legs into a heap at the end of the bed and hauled herself from the mattress. Plastic shutters let stripes of light through the window, illuminated the wall in a parallel pattern. The light-shapes rolled over her as she walked to the window and loosened the shutter, just enough to peek through them. There were eyes everywhere, from the floating surveillance tanks to the perverted neighbours. She was met with the mundane landscape of her apartment: the sprawling towers of scrap metal and cables and trash that formed the foundation of the buildings and filled the cracks in between the shady motels and squatter buildings. The spotlight suspended from a floating tank flicked back and forth, wandered over the streets and the trash in search of looters or prostitutes or child vagrants. The Sentinels – as the floating tanks were known – cleared the streets for the tourists: army folk and businessmen that came to enjoy the local culture: neon lights, drugs and alcohol complete with cheap bordellos that sold everyone from toddlers to geriatrics. There weren't many geriatrics – one rarely made it that far these days.

She sealed the shutter, pressed her palm over it to be sure that no one could see her. If the fans weren't blaring into her ears, she might have heard the people upstairs fighting, the couple below her fucking or the mice squealing in the pantry and scurrying in and out of the breadbox. It had started with one measly runt with a grey coat, big black eyes and a tiny body shuddering from fear. She had picked it up by its scrawny pink tail and watched it struggle – had it really just wanted a piece of food? She plucked a bit of bread from the loaf and placed it on the counter, set the mouse down next to it. He landed, haltingly and reached with minute claws for hands to stuff the bread into its mouth. She couldn't kill it. It was just trying to survive.

Her arm reached mechanically for the dimmer light and a soft glow invaded the room, just enough for her to see what she was doing. She approached the dresser and threw it open, rifled through the drawers and snatched an elastic piece of cloth from the pile. She fastened it around her breasts, pressing them flat. In another drawer, in a locked wooden box, she retrieved a harness and member she attached over her underwear. Her facade was nearly complete. Next came the thick socks and baggy trousers, the white undershirt, the black army-issue boots, the shirt and finely pressed jacket. She pressed a tiny voice-changer beneath her tongue and adjusted it until she was confident it wouldn't slip. She ran a smoothing hand over her fine cropped hair - not an inch long above her head – and snuffed it beneath her lieutenant's cap.

Each time she dressed, every put-on, she yearned for her life before the fall, before the chaos of Gran Pulse. Her hair had been long then - beautiful, as alluring as she remembered herself to be. She missed being a woman, being herself, using her sexuality as a lure for potential lovers that she wanted - that she deisred, using her intelligence and strength to persevere through the military. But that woman was dead. After the fall and the election of the theocratic PSICOM government, the fascist grip of Dysley's doctrine took over her world.

She couldn't live under the new rules for women – commodities under the law, subject to men and without personhood. They were required to cover themselves in public and could not travel without a male escort. They could not hold any job other than in the sex slave trade. And if they were caught in public or kidnapped from their home, they became the property of their new owners, subject to their will. To reclaim a lost woman was to start a small war, especially in the Gomorrah district. Unwilling to live under terrorism, her former self had to die.

She realised with futility that she should have died outright. There was little left for her and each day was a new potential threat – an outing, the threat of a devastating reveal. She had no money to relocate if she was discovered, and she had no motivation to scrape together a new trap for herself. It was only a matter of time, in this town or the next, before she was unveiled.

She thumbed through the cash in her wallet and decided she had enough, placed the object on the inside of her breast pocket and buttoned up to the collar. She reached the door and felt suddenly odd. Her hand swooped to her belt upon reflex and pawed at the empty space. She returned to her bed and grabbed the gun in the holster beneath her pillow, clipped the holster to her belt and she headed back to the door.

Out in the decaying, stale hallway she hurried for the elevator. Her hand slammed on the button and it did not light. She hit it again. No response. In a fit of frustration, she hit it over and over in quick succession, and paced back and forth for a moment. Nothing. She darted down the hall to the staircase and dashed down the stairs. The soldier burst from the stairwell doorway into the abandoned lobby and stepped gingerly over the homeless squatters lying on the ground in blankets. Most of them did not move. She wasn't sure if they were alive.

As she walked into the night, the cool air hit her face and filled her nostrils, mixing with the smells of the sewer congealing with the aromas of the fast food carts, the open-window Asian restaurants and the smoke from the industrial machines. Bright neon lights lit the asphalt street as steam rose up from the sewer grates. Police tanks and velocycles soared past over the third tier, fast enough to decapitate people if they flew too low. Club music roared through the buildings on the second tier, between the layer of scrap and garbage and the cheap food street-level. Balconies were choked with patrons and prostitutes, drinks spilling onto the ground below. Above the third tier was the low income apartments and abandoned buildings. Above that was a dark cloud of smog and dust. The garbage and the scrap seemed to tower to infinity beyond the smoke.

The sight of the drunk bargoers made her walk with a desperate pace. People at the seedy street bars turned to eye her with mild suspicion and then abandoned her for their drink. A velocycle zoomed overhead. She made it to the corner and turned, almost jogged to the descending staircase in front of her and knocked on the door. A willowy, greying man appeared in the doorway, rubbing his bristly beard. A thin screen door frayed at the corners separated them.

"Whaddya want?" He crowed.

"Hear you deal with certain... medications?" She hesitated.

His eyes widened a bit, then became lucid again. "Your heard wrong."

He moved to close the door and she pulled at the screen, wedged her boot between the door frame and the wood to keep it from shutting.

"I really, _really_ need something." Her voice wavered.

He regarded her for a moment, searched her eyes for any hints of deceit. Finding none, he finally turned and gestured into his apartment.

She was careful not to turn her back on him and she watched as he locked the door and wandered to a long mahogany cabinet.

"Who told you about me?" He asked.

"A friend at a party," she replied.

He shook his head as he dragged open the drawer. "You army boys are so fucked on this shit, I dunno how you fight the damn war."

He retrieved a small morphine packet.

"I need more than that – " She said in a rush.

He chuckled mirthlessly. "How much you need?"

She rubbed her shoulder uncomfortably and chewed at her bottom lip. "Maybe... a handful?"

He shook his head, "You got the cash for that?"

She searched in her breast pocket for her wallet and took out a wad of cash. The man stared at it, then back at her with amusement.

"Shit... " He chuckled again and took the money, gave the soldier the drugs.

The old man closed and locked up the drawer, wandered over to another locked cabinet and began to unlock a safe.

The soldier stuffed the morphine packets into her jacket and smoothed the creases in her uniform. She watched him with some curiosity and winced when his back stiffened.

"Why you still here?" He barked without looking at her.

She nodded and uttered a quick thank you before she ducked for the door.

"Whole country's going to shit, you know," he mused.

She bobbed her head, "Yessir."

"We won the war yet?"

"I don't think so, sir."

"What you mean you don't think so?" He shouted, turning to her full of fury.

She pursed her lips and suppressed her irritation. "Never been deployed."

He cursed and shook his head, "Is it true our boys killed a whole bunch of people last week? I heard they did..."

"I dunno, sir."

His lips thinned as he bit them, "My brother... he was a writer, made his own newspaper... ya know those little ones printed on the blue paper? He went missing a few weeks ago..."

She stood straight, stone-faced and silent, eyes on the wall. He mumbled and went back to opening the safe. She let herself out of the apartment and jogged up the steps.

Back on the street, she headed briskly back to her apartment, boots hitting the ground at a marked pace. A Sentinel hovered overhead, descended through the dark cloud above to the third tier. Its spotlight swung in pendulum fashion from the clubs to the street and back. She could feel the heat of it creep across her back as it flashed overhead. Her pace quickened. It swooped down again, the heat cutting through the fabric of her uniform. As she hurried forward, she realised that a circle of light had settled over her, that the heat at her back was constant. Her eyes widened, breath became short. She was caught – surely they'd seen her. They were scanning her and found the morphine in her pocket and were ready to arrest her.

"Yamada!"

A disembodied voice sounded from behind her. The light was too bright for her eyes to focus. A monstrous black shadow formed in the distance behind her, carrying with it the sound of the voice.

In a flash the Sentinel's spotlight dipped away.

"Yamada!" Came the young man's voice again, "Why the hell don't you pick up your phone?"

She stared dumbfounded at the group of soldiers, a collection of hard liquor and beer wafting from their slurring and chuckling mouths.

"Yamada, you little prick," one of the men said, "You're impossible to get a hold of."

They swarmed her and two men in their gathering broke apart to absorb her into the group, placing their arms over her shoulders and using her as a support. They were sweating and struggling to stand, bouncing off each other as they walked.

"Where have you been all night, huh?"

When she offered him a scowl, he swatted her shoulder in good spirits.

"Fuck it," he slurred. "Come drink with us."

"Naw, I gotta get back home... " she whined.

"Why?" Another man shouted, spinning shakily on his heel as he turned to walk backwards. "You don't have a wife!"

"C'mon," the other man that flanked her said, squeezing her shoulder in reassurance. "I know just the place."

Her stomach turned as they wound down the dank and narrow streets and settled at the staircase to _LOT'S_, one of the most expensive bordellos on the second tier. They catered exclusively to army clientele. Her feeble paycheck had kept her from most of Gomorrah's overpriced clubs and she hated the look of the women wherever she went, knowing that she was a joke - a lie - and a traitor. In an instant, she could be discovered and would be on the other side of it, joining the ranks of the chattel. And what ally would she have then? The men would beat and use her because she was a woman, the women would beat her for living as a man. The clubs always made her anxious.

The large red sign flickered in the darkness, the thump of the music seeping through the front door. As the bouncer checked their papers and ranks, the opening door unleashed a crescendo of music on them, red rays cloaking them as they walked the narrow hall to the main room. Above the large cylindrical bar, a handful of pole dancers squirmed naked for the visual pleasure of the patrons who entered the club. A flashing but grubby dance floor was filled with scantily clad women and drunk nude soldiers. A man was on the bar countertop, having his way with one of the girls. The main chamber was scattered with private booths, where all the women on the floor would perform private dances and favours. An elevator at the back lead up to the cheap midlevel rooms and expensive top-level penthouses that wrapped up through the third and fourth tier. Some claimed the club went beyond the fourth tier, into the oblivion beyond the dark cloud. All the women on the floor were between the ages of thirteen and fifty while the rest were kept in private rooms, available to order from a catalogue at the bar. The club's policy stipulated as much, hanging on a plaque framed on the wall above the shelves of drinks behind the counter.

Nausea rose to the back of her throat. She choked on the musk of sweat, sex and cheap cologne. The group of men hauled her up to the bar and collapsed onto the plastic stools. They shouted a litany of orders – whiskey, vodka, beer. They waited in the pregnant silence, eyed her with expectation. Rum, came her quick response and they cheered and hammered their fists on the counter in approval. A glass of amber liquid slid toward her, caught up in the red light of the club. The men gripped their drinks and proposed a toast, the essence of which she missed, and they clinked their glasses together. Each soldier downed the drink in a gulp, and she followed, grimacing at the taste.

The alcohol burned a path down her throat and flamed in her stomach. It was pleasant, but it was an unwelcome distraction. She had to get home. She had business to take care of. Seeing no immediate escape, she ordered another and presented the bartender with her ID. He struck the card through the machines and her information soared through the wires:bank accounts, her permitted credit and all of her personal information. As she carefully sipped her next drink, her eyes wandered around the room.

There were the dancers, the strippers, the booths, the drinkers, the tables of men gambling and others watching it all, playing voyeur to the theatre before them. In one of the corners a group of women gathered, some old but most young, fending off the advances of the men around them. Some girls had drug-slackened faces that stared dispassionately at the walls. Something caught her eye and she craned her neck, narrowed her focus on the corner of the club. Her hand dropped absently, drink settling back onto the counter with it as her eyes widened and the shock hit her. The bartender neared her, casting stealthy glances in her direction as she ran a cloth over the counter. The girl watched her with fascination.

"See something you like?" She asked, trying to follow the soldier's line of sight.

The soldier 's mouth hung agape. Her eyes flicked toward the bartender - a young, shirtless blonde with an angelic smile and ruby lipstick. The soldier's tongue darted out to wet her lips before she responded, "What'd she used to be?"

The bartender's expression soured. She'd heard that question before. The women that used to be something – doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers – they were the most common targets in the bar. Some guys got off on giving it to women that used to be successful, knowing that they hated their plight more than the young girls who knew no other living. A client told her once that he could see it in their eyes, the hope that died just before they were taken, when the women realised that they couldn't escape, that their struggle was futile.

The bartender glowered at her but the soldier didn't seem to notice. Before the woman could answer, the soldier rose from her seat. The young woman burned with curiosity as she watched her disappear into the crowd. She uttered under her breath,

"A Dragoon."

OOO

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

Title: AFTER THE FALL

Author: Lechery

Category: Flight (Fang/Light Romance, Angst)

Rating: T (for coarse language and sexual themes)

Summary: POST-GAME! A fascist government has seized control of Grand Pulse and displaced the former L'Cie. One has a plan to escape, the other is helplessly trapped. One night, their worlds are turned upside-down.

Disclaimer: I own nothing and stuff, Square Enix owns everything. I'm keeping the fandom alive, Square. Cut me slack and don't sue me plz.

OOO

She wound through the sea of people, ducked the waves of dancers tossing her left and right, navigated the haze of the dim-glow lights. For a moment she lost her focus, the image of what she might have seen gone in the mirage of sweat and bodies. But she forced her way through with the vim of religious conviction, peeling back a stranger by the shoulder as she struggled in the crowded space. Her knee made contact with something solid and she groaned in pain, bent toward the offending obstacle. Below her was a waist-high fence with a heavy electronic lock to keep it shut. She frantically searched the group of women behind the barrier and was crushed to see clusters of all unfamiliar painted faces. Perhaps it had been a dream.

Among the women were soldiers that had conquered the lock – the admirals and the captains, all titles she dreamt to bear – and they tossed looks of contempt toward her, condescending grins of smug satisfaction. Their attention stirred the women's interest and the peculiar man standing at the gateway became a spectacle, his mouth and eyes agape with awe and staring as a child might. But it was then that the soldier found the object of her dream, flanked by a crowd of equally exploited women whispering into her ear.

Lightning's heart hammered in her throat, heat pulsed through her ears. Their eyes locked, filled with mirrored intensity and disbelief. A flash of agony washed over her painted face, beautiful even in the faint light but nothing like what Lightning remembered; the look was plastic – contrived, appropriate for the gaudiness of the club but foreign to the woman in front of her. The woman hesitated to meet her at the gate. Men snickered at her interest – women behind the gate weren't required to give the lower ranks any favours. Still she was property, and it was better to be a prostitute than a ghost wondering the dark oblivion of the street.

At first they said nothing – there was little to say with the time that had drained away from them, neither one able to save the other from the cruelty of her fate. The prostitute searched the soldier's face for confirmation, apprehensive and uncertain of her motives. The red lights played along their faces, the club music thundered through their ears. Water glassed in the prostitute's eyes but stubborn pride kept the tears from smudging her makeup and trickling down her cheeks. Lightning could see all of her body beneath the thin cloth – her breasts, her stomach, the apex at her legs. The entire club could see it if they stared. How long had she been kept that way, denied the privacy and dignity of her own body?

She leaned close and Lightning stifled her desire to recoil.

"Is it really you?"

The soldier gave a wistful half-smile and nodded.

A security guard behind the gate approached them, his interest in their conversation evident from a distance. His meaty paw clamped the prostitute's shoulder and pushed her aside.

"You can't afford this one," he said simply, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I'll pay double whatever she's worth," Lightning replied with utter calm and thrust her ID card beneath the guard's nose.

He examined it carefully, removing a penlight from his belt as he checked it over.

"That's more than your weekly allocation permits," he replied.

"I have credit," she fired back indifferent to the guard's irritation.

The allotment rules were set in stone at the ration stands, ATMs and department stores. One could only buy what the weekly allotment permitted: bread one week, rice another, a block of chocolate the next, a new uniform after that. But all of the allotment rules were bent at the bars and the clubs. Whatever money was meticulously saved in controlled and meagre bank accounts could be spent to its last cent on alcohol and sex without restriction. It was sold as the government's gratitude – a gift – to soldiers for their service, an endless supply of fun and vice in exchange for a lifetime of dedication to the military. And almost all men were in the military, the rest were old or too far destroyed to function, going rotten in the corners of back alleys and motel rooms.

The guard sighed and removed his notepad from his breast pocket, sliding the soldier's ID card through a slot in the LED screen. The screen cast neon colours and shapes across his face as an encoded list of information flashed before him. The result was green. He nodded, struck the ID card through the chipped slot and beckoned the prostitute back to the gate. She obeyed with nonchalance - the effect of a mechanical routine enforced through frequent beatings. She exposed the barcode on the side of her neck and the guard lifted his notepad to scan it. He handed Lightning her ID and waved a cardkey over the gate. Light offered the woman a hand as she headed through the opened door.

"How long do I have her?" She asked the guard.

"Whole night, if you want her," he shrugged.

Lightning pocketed her ID and stared at the woman in front of her clad in bright stiletto heels, thinner than she remembered her to be. The woman seized her hand and lead her through the sweaty maze to the main elevator where she passed her hand over the scanner. The elevator descended to the main floor and the steel doors separated. They walked into the grey chamber, standing still until the doors closed and strangled the noise of the club down to a throaty hum. The computer screen prompted for a destination. Light removed her ID card and jammed it into the chip slot. Her hands shook as she read the only option available: a small room, the one kind she could afford, on the fourth tier.

She sagged at the realisation, her curiosity dashed. She'd never been in the elevators at _LOT's_ but she knew the rumours: the penthouses that went beyond the cloud above the fourth tier. She'd wanted to see if it was true, yearned to see what was beyond the darkness that loomed over her home. But there was only one option on the screen: single room, fourth tier. Perhaps the rumours weren't true and no one had ever gotten beyond the cloud after all. She often forgot what the world looked like before the fall of Cocoon. Little threads remained – Bodhum, Serah, Oerba – but they too, faded by degrees.

Two stroking palps of fingers tapped the touch screen and she confirmed the destination. The machine roared to life. She plucked her ID from the computer and deposited it into her pocket, returning to the empty corner of the elevator. The prostitute stood in silence on the other side, her arms anchored to the rail she leaned on, her eyes downcast. Lightning kept her vision narrowed on the elevator doors and chewed on her bottom lip.

They choked on the other's silence as the numbers illuminated on the keypad, each representing the floor disappearing beneath them. A chime signalled the end of their journey and the doors dragged apart. The prostitute led her down the hall, past the rows of identical doors to the one with the circular vacancy light. They breached the doorway and the soldier locked the door behind her. Lightning watched her settle on the bed, lips pursed in concentration. She didn't move, unsure how to proceed.

"I want to shower first," she said, the unmistakable Oerban twang of her voice sending a haunting shiver through the soldier's bones.

"Okay," Lightning replied.

The prostitute grimaced and neared her with caution, "How are you doing that? With your voice?"

The soldier exhaled a faint chuckle and reached with her finger and thumb into her mouth. She pulled the voice changer from its resting place, a string of spit caught on the end of it.

"Neat trick," she mused. "Where'd you get that?"

Lightning's expression grew solemn, "A friend I used to know."

She softened suddenly, the sorrow in her expression triggered by the sound of a ghost. She reached out and cupped the soldier's cheek. Lightning shut her eyes in ecstasy, the slow burn of grief welling up to the surface. She frowned for a moment, grimaced as though she might cry, but she recovered.

"Fang, I – "

Fang placed a finger on her lips to silence her. "Don't... it's useless now." She seized the lip of the cap that Light wore and lifted it away. Long, tender fingers slid through her feather-like hair, resting at the back of her neck. The prostitute's eyes scanned the strawberry blonde shock atop her head and her inquisitive stare dropped to meet her own.

"It would have given me away if I kept it," Light said.

"Did you keep a lock of it?"

Lightning averted her gaze, "No."

Fang loosened the buttons at the soldier's collar, "You make a very charming boy."

"I'd prefer to be a woman," she remarked.

"You are a woman," Fang replied, lifting the soldier's chin up to hold her gaze for a moment. She returned to focus on her work.

Her deft fingers unfastened her jacket with care, peeling the fabric over the silver coated buttons. Fang's eyes followed her hands and Lightning burned from the scrutiny, anxious that Fang might turn her gaze upward and see through her composure. When the jacket was undone, Fang parted the fabric with her thumbs, running her hands back up to the collar to seize fistfuls of it and coax it from Light's shoulders. The jacket landed in a heap on the floor.

Unnerved, the soldier bent to pick up the jacket and dust it clean, hanging it on a nearby coat rack. Fang crossed her arms over her chest and sauntered into the bathroom, an uncharacteristic distance about her. Light's hands trembled and she attempted in vain to steady them. She stumbled to the bed in the centre of the room and listened to the shower sound from the bathroom with anticipation and dread. Fang had left the door wide open but the soldier kept her gaze on the wall. She sat down hard on the mattress and began to loosen the cuffs on her sleeves, the buttons on the collar of her shirt. Wavering, she unfastened her trousers and her boots, divested of her socks and untied the complicated mess of the harness device. She undid the bind of fabric wrapped around her chest and stuffed the pile into a corner on the floor to ensure that it was well out of sight.

The shower occupied the forefront of her mind, the sound of it marking the time she had left in solitude. She lifted off the bed and opened the mini fridge wedged beneath the tall nightstand. Her index finger skimmed the line of brightly coloured bottles and bland paper labels, each one filled with the promise of quick and potent numbness. She pulled a silver bottle from the rack and popped the cap, sipped it and grimaced at the taste of the powerful liquid.

Lightning's eyes scanned the room and absorbed the weight of the void. There was nothing on the wall but the chipped paint; there was the bed with the mini fridge next to it. A light dimmer was next to the headboard. The bathroom appeared as empty - a sterile, florescent lit room with white tile and faded white paint. There was no care in any of it, no charm, no flamboyance. It was a cheap and desolate place suited to a barren and violent pursuit, the stage upon which human property met viciousness, where the dehumanized and frustrated world of men tried to exorcise its pain through the violation of shattered women. It was troubling enough when Cocoon was still intact, when the scales of inequality were becoming increasingly level and men and women reached out to each other only to miss and to misunderstand. But after the election, violence knew neither bounds nor mercy. Society was guided by the whims of reactionary minds and the draconian scribbling of ancient books.

She appeared in the doorway, her body dripping with the beady remnants of her shower. The soldier swallowed hard when she looked up, stunned by the sudden change. Fang's makeup was gone, the mask peeled away and revealed beneath the woman she recalled from long ago, when they fought as equals and soldiers against the tyranny of Dysley and Orphan. She was naked beneath the white towel wrapped around her chest and Light saw the bruises along her thighs and the back of her legs, hidden before by layers of makeup. Fang caught her stare and sat on the bed away from her, covering the wounds on her legs. The same dark marks peppered her shoulder blades. The soldier sauntered over to the edge of the bed and handed Fang the bottle of alcohol.

She gestured with her head to Fang's back, "Does it hurt?"

Fang feigned confusion for a moment and shook her head as she swallowed a mouthful of the bitter liquid, "No. They're just marks now."

"How long have you been here?" Light obtained the bottle and took a sip before she offered it again.

"Since the renewal of the Purge," Fang replied, taking the bottle back. "Years now."

Lightning blanched. Years. The soldier's apartment was up the street and a few blocks away. She'd walked past the club time and time again, wondered about the rumours and the mystique. She'd fantasized about blowing it up, planting a bomb in the basement or charging in with as many weapons as she could to destroy it and everyone inside. She would bring peace to it and reduce it to ash, end the suffering of the children and the women trapped inside, kill the abusers and the club itself – the house that promoted, enabled and ensured the ongoing violence to anyone who walked beyond the doors. And yet Fang was the one languishing behind the gaudy neon sign and the thumping club music, getting wearier, getting sicker, getting tired.

"You alright?" Fang asked as she watched the soldier grow quiet.

"Fine," she replied.

Fang exhaled a breath in resignation and took a long drag from the bottle before she abandoned it on the nightstand, "So how do you want to do this?"

"Lightning frowned, "Do what?"

She released a mirthless chuckle, "Don't play dumb."

"What are you talking about?"

"Why else would you come here?" Fang said indignantly. She rose from the bed clutching the towel to her body. "You want what everyone else wants."

Lightning stood, "I didn't want to come here! I was brought by a group of soldiers from my team... "

"You could have refused," Fang interrupted.

"No, I couldn't," Light replied, gritting her teeth. "I can't. I _never_ can. I had to pretend – to be like them – if I was ever found out... murder would be too merciful."

Fang's expression became sombre. She ran her tongue over her bottom lip as she considered her words. They both fell silent. The soldier averted her eyes and chewed on the inside of her cheek, her breathing laboured through her parted lips. Her cheeks flushed red, in part from anger and in part from shame. Water welled in her eyes and she frowned, tried to deaden her rising emotion. Fang secured the towel to her chest and approached her with hesitation, stopping inches away from her until the soldier could feel the heat of the Pulsian's body.

"Am I a monster?" Her glass-eyed stare met Fang's.

Fang cupped the soldier's face in her hands and bent to brush her lips with her own. Lightning remained still and kept her eyes lowered to the ground. The prostitute searched her face for some form of recognition as a tear slipped down the soldier's cheek. Fang pulled her into a fierce embrace and threaded her fingers through the hair at the back of her head. Lightning sagged into her body, burying her face in the crook of her neck. Wetness gathered on her shoulder as Light sobbed quietly.

Time slipped away, immeasurable and lost to them. Fang stroked the hair at the back of the soldier's head and planted a kiss on her temple, closing her eyes to remember. But the memories were deteriorated, half-hearted things, nebulous no matter how she strained to recall them. She frowned at the epiphany: she'd forgotten how to dream. A dulling routine of agony and alcohol had put her mind to rest. The horror of reality hit her perforce. The world had made its way back into her mind – the truth of it – and it was a nightmare.

"You're alive..."

The whisper startled her out of her reverie and she bit her lip for the pain, longing to feel anything other than the storm whirling in her mind.

"Just noticed that, did you?" Fang said, her voice wavering with emotion.

"I was sure they'd killed you," Light pulled away to meet her distraught gaze.

Fang ran her thumb across the soldier's cheek, whipping away the moisture gathered there. Her bottom lip quivered, "Still here."

The soldier clutched her to her chest, placing a kiss on her cheek.

Fang wrestled her away, irritation in her tone. "Why did you come here?"

Light paused and inhaled a deep breath. Her gaze drifted toward her jacket.

"I can get you out of here," she said resolutely.

"No you can't," Fang's eyes narrowed in anger.

Lightning ambled to the coat rack and yanked her jacket from the hook. She rushed back to the bed and emptied the contents of her breast pocket onto the mattress.

Fang scanned the scattered pile of plastic containers and plucked one from the bed, "Where did you get these?"

"A contact in the army," the soldier replied. "Nobody I know has died in combat since the start of the war, but half my team in training fell to this."

"Did you know I was here?" She asked, a touch of accusation in her voice.

"No," the soldier replied. "I bought this for myself tonight."

Fang's eyes widened. "You wouldn't get passed the third syringe."

"I know," Light answered, her voice almost a whisper.

The soldier waltzed back to the bottle of alcohol and swallowed a mouthful of the foul liquid. She offered the bottle to Fang, "Join me."

Fang was apprehensive at first, but finally took the bottle and nursed from it. She stopped abruptly and scrambled to gather the morphine syringes from the bed to pile them onto the night table. Fang seized the bottle again and tipped it back to guzzle the rest of the oily liquor, placing the empty bottle next to the morphine when she was done. Then, without pause or concern, she seized Lightning's hand and led her to the bed, positioning the soldier in front of her as she sat down on the mattress. Fang's fingertips glided up the soldier's shirt and rolled over each button as the fabric parted. When she arrived at the last button, she popped it open and let the shirt fall from Light's shoulders.

Fang wriggled from the towel around her chest and placed her hands on either side of the soldier's hips to draw her close, "I want to remember you first."

She fell back onto the mattress and brought Lightning with her. The soldier rested on her bent forearms as she nestled between Fang's legs. Fang hooked her hand around the back of Light's neck and crushed her lips in a bruising kiss. Lightning responded in kind, pressing Fang into the bed. Their hands roamed over each other, their mouths insistent and exploring. They were both looking for something: release, forgiveness, a moment of ecstasy. Time melted into incomprehension and insignificance. Everything was a tactile function; there was nothing that went beyond the reach of their hands, the touch of their lips or the captivation of their eyes. There was no magic or pleasure beyond the physical, no revelations. There was only the supreme awareness of the self, of bodies and of one another. And at its height – the halting precipice on which they balanced – they came down with a crash, shuddering spasms of release that left them still, panting and sticky with sweat.

Fang let her gaze roam over the soldier who'd drifted into sleep, her mouth slightly parted. Tranquility overcame the soldier's face, innocence in her vulnerability. Her cheeks were flushed a soft rose-pink upon her alabaster skin, her lips reddened from their vigorous abuse. The scent of her lingered in the air: the intricate mix of the musk of sex and the sweet fragrance unique to Light alone. Fang inhaled deeply and her eyes slipped shut. Her mind awoke to a buried era where she rested with the soldier beside her, flowing strawberry-blonde locks draped over her porcelain face, the taste of her on the Pulsian's tongue. What peace they had then, coupled with the fervent hunger of love. Fang opened her eyes and sucked in a breath to stifle a sob. She hadn't lost everything after all.

OOO

Lightning woke with a start to the humid haze of the foreign room, bewildered by the darkness. She cursed; it was sloppy to lose control. She sat up and the thin blanket collected around her naked hips, cold air pulled at the moist flesh of her breasts and her back. A body lay next to her, heat emanating from it in waves. It was a dream, she thought surely, to feel so safe. The headache throbbed at her temples and pain forced her epiphany: it wasn't a dream. It was real, all of it, a nightmare complete with fleeting comforts and reappearing phantoms. She ran a hand through her hair and reached to switch on the lamp.

The bed jostled as she rose from it mindfully to collect the morphine syringes. Light pinched one between her thumb and forefinger and shook it vigorously to ready the drug for deposit. Her gaze drifted from the work of her hands to the body on the bed and where she might strike her target. On Fang's breast – the beautiful, supple warmth of it seemed a shame to destroy. Her neck, lovely and thin and inviting. Her eyes travelled further, past her shoulder, past the main vein on her forearm, the clichéd and clinical place for a needle. Junkies overdosed with track marks on their arms, drooling between the trash bins and rotten carcasses of alley cats, the reek of sweat and piss on them. No, she wouldn't expend her so cheaply. Biting her bottom lip and narrowing her eyes in scrutiny, Lightning found her target. It was as veined and strong as it was smooth and delicate: Fang's wrist.

Her body stirred and the soldier looked up to find hooded eyes upon her; a heady hangover of pleasure lingered in them but they were keenly aware of her intentions, no matter how hazed. Lightning returned to the bed and sat down, morphine syringe in hand. Her free hand reached up to brush the dampened bangs away from Fang's face.

"Go on, soldier," Fang said groggily, her thick Oerban twang as familiar as ever. "Set me free."

Lightning ducked her gaze and grappled hold of her nerve, steadied her hand. It was dangerous to look Fang in the eye for too long – there was too much adoration there, too much to give one foolish hope. She needed to maintain her focus, see the world as it was: a maze of dead ends with a single exit: the end of all feeling, the freedom of nothingness.

The soldier gingerly grasped the prostitute's wrist and brought it to her lips with deliberate slowness. Her lips brushed the soft flesh textured with veins and thick with the blood beneath it. The tip of her tongue flicked against the sensitive skin, moistening it as another kiss christened her wrist. Fang listened to the gentle suckling and her chest swelled with affection, her hand curved in to cup Lightning's cheek. Light stopped haltingly, raising the syringe in her other hand, tipping Fang's wrist further back to expose the glistening target.

Her flesh resisted for a moment, relinquishing with a quiet pop beneath the tip of the needle as it slid carefully inside. Fang's brow furrowed when the pressure collected and the poisonous liquid surged into her veins. Then the pressure was swiftly gone and the world was liquid and distant, a pleasurable numbness that permeated her senses. At once there was something on her lips: the faded soldier's kiss. Then nothing. And then another pinprick, a gasping sigh, a darkening, a quieting and a lulling of everything until the edge of reality was barely traceable, evermore vanishing...

She watched Fang's eyes grow vacant, saw her jaw slacken as the life drained from her. The soldier's hands began to tremble, her chest heaving as her cheeks flushed and her eyes clouded. A wave of emotion stopped her short of the third syringe and her hand lashed out at the nightstand, frantically clawing at the pile of morphine. She threw them in a heap between their bodies, lying as close as she could to the Pulsian's corpse. With a syringe seized in a shaking fist, she jabbed the needle into her wrist, shrieking in pain at the force of it. Light forced the plunger down with haste and scrambled for another. The motion had to be swift and she stuck the next needle before the wave of delirium struck her senseless. With the remainder of her wits and strength, she forced the liquid through and her arm fell limply at her side with the syringe obscenely protruding from it.

Lightning turned her head to Fang and she faded with a final, fleeting whimper.


End file.
